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#changealburywodonga
Regional Change Perspectives
Regional businesses have experienced their fair share of disruptive change over the past 2 years.
In this series, business owners & leaders in Albury Wodonga shared some of the impacts they faced and how they've steered their businesses through disruptive change.
When Covid hit, having fixed contracts that kept essential services running during Covid shielded Brett's business from the severe financial impacts that many other businesses experienced. “Many business in our region suffered extreme hardship, and some of our competitors – particularly those operating charter bus services in capital cities - were decimated.
“Honour at the centre of everything we do," says Rick, "and honour was the way we went about managing the impacts of Covid on our employees, clients, and suppliers.”
It was also quite important to Rick that Hadar didn’t just survive Covid but emerge from the challenges of Covid – and from the skills shortage and supply issues currently engulfing the industry - ready to thrive.
On the day Victoria went into lockdown, Natasha was driving home from Orange when everything began unravelling. “I was telling a friend on the phone that we’d had 516 cancellations in the space of 4 hours, which was unprecedented. I started thinking ‘what can I do?’, ‘what am I going to say to the team?’, ‘how can I fix it?’, yet suddenly so much was out of her control and everything felt like it was rapidly spiralling out of control.
Pre-Covid, David Kapay, wasn’t thinking about anything much outside his restaurant, Miss Amelie, a modern European fine dining restaurant located in Wodonga. And then Covid struck, and in a blink of an eye Miss Amelie closed, forcing David to choose whether to pivot quickly or risk losing his dream - four solid years of blood, sweat and tears.
Craig came into the training and recruitment sector with a strong track record in sales management and leadership roles. With a natural disposition and talent for supporting and developing people, Craig steered his business and people through the difficulties and disruptions of Covid putting leadership at the front and centre of the change effort in his business.
Simone left a successful 25-year career at Bakers Delight and moved from Sydney to Albury to setup a new franchise. Just as she was ramping up the networking, business development and mentoring essential to getting a fledgling business off the ground, potential referral partners began shutting their doors to external visitors. Growing the business became tricky then.
Exact Computer’s customers see value in having their equipment repaired. “Covid didn’t stop tech devices from breaking down, so being accessible for repairs during lockdowns and border closures became a major challenge.” A bit of out-of-the-box thinking resulted in a cross-border collaboration that served customers on both sides of the border.